The Importance Of Being Captain
by Vivian Street
Summary: That's Starfleet's MO, modus operandi, way of operating. To be late and useless and only show up for the cleanup and the condolences and the funerals.


AN: My profile's looking kinda lonely, ne? Anyway, this one-shot's been kicking around the back of my mind ever since that one bit in my other fic, Safe Mode, where Kirk reflected on what a struggle it had been for him to get used to being called 'captain.'

Comments/reviews/critiques are always appreciated :D

Enjoy.

/AN

The Importance Of Being Captain

XXXXXX

Walking through the corridors of Starfleet Academy, Captain James T. Kirk lets his mind wander. It's been five years since he graduated, and almost four since he last set foot in these halls. It is almost impossible for him to equate the uncertain, brash, and belligerent young man he'd been with the man he is today.

He hears some hurrying footsteps behind him.

"Captain!" An unfamiliar voice calls.

Kirk begins to turn around and his response is on his lips.

XXXXXX

Jimmy is four, playing with the twins (Calvin and Allen) who live on the farm next to his. The twins' mother is a few rooms away, in the kitchen. She checks on the children occasionally, but spends most of the time cooking lunch and yelling at Sam and Avery (Calvin and Allen's older sister) to stop teasing the dogs.

The three boys are playing Kelvin, a game Jimmy has made up because just about the only thing he knows about his dad is that he was captain of a starship. It seems like the coolest job ever.

"Jimmy, the—" Jimmy cuts Allen off.

"That's Captain Jimmy to you, Commander Allen!" He chastises.

"Captain Jimmy," the commander yells, "the Klingons are attacking! Chief Calvin is leading them!"

Sure enough, up sweeps Calvin, arms full of the Klingon fleet that had been hiding behind the couch.

"Allen, arm the—"

"That's _Commander_ Allen!"

"Arm the stupid torpedoes!"

But it is too late. The moment of hesitation had spelled their doom, and the Klingon warbirds quickly dogpiled on top of the solitary Kelvin.

"Captain Jimmy, Captain Jimmy, ship d—"

He is interrupted by the entrance of Jimmy's older brother. Sam approaches slowly, menacingly, and Jimmy knows that if he doesn't play his cards right he'll end up with a punch in the stomach.

"_Captain_ Jimmy? I thought you wanted to be a pilot, like Major Carter in that stupid comic book you're always talking about." Jimmy doesn't say a word. "Being a captain is the stupidest job ever. The only reason Dad died is that he was a captain. That's what happens when you're a captain; you go into space and you die." Jimmy shrinks back from his brother, but Sam closes the distance and sticks his face really close to Jimmy's. "Do you want to die, little brother?"

Jimmy can't help it. He bursts into tears, which brings the neighbor's mother running.

He never played Kelvin again.

XXXXXX

Jim's eight and he's in history class.

They are learning some Federation history, Earth/Human-centric, naturally. In mid-lecture, the teacher looks up and finds him with her eyes.

"James, could you go to the guidance councilor's office? He wants to see you."

He thinks he hadn't done anything wrong, but who really knows? Every adult has different requirements. Frank gets mad if he sees Jim more than two or three times a day. Grandma gets worried if she doesn't see him at least five times, and there is a maximum to the amount of not-talking he can get away with as far as she is concerned.

He takes the hall pass from his teacher's hand and leaves.

Jim fidgets as he sits in the plastic blue chair and the councilor gazes at him.

"I thought that it was best if I spoke to you, James. Do you know what topic they are covering in your history class?"

Jim frowns. "Federation history. I've been paying attention, Mr. Jones." He adds reproachfully.

"I'm sure you have. You…" He trails off as he accesses Jim's files on his consol. "…have the highest grade in the class for last quarter. Good job!" Jim shrugs. He'd been interested in last quarter's topic; first contact with the Vulcans. He isn't anywhere near as interested in Federation history, but he isn't about to tell an adult that. Especially an adult who's a confederate for the teachers.

"But today, they're covering a topic that you might be familiar with. Do you know about the Starship Kelvin?"

Jim flinches slightly. Either Mr. Jones notices, or else he is following some script stored in his head. "You know, James, that you can talk to me about anything, right? Your father was a hero, and you should be proud of the sacrifice he made." There is an uncomfortable silence.

Jim fidgets a bit more.

"How do you feel about your father, James?" Jim really wishes the councilor would stop using his name so much. And asking him all these questions. He knows the words of praise and admiration that Mr. Jones wants to hear, but he can't bring himself to say them.

"My dad died the day I was born." He knows these words by heart. "He was a Captain. He was stupid."

Mr. Jones blinks.

"Is that really how you feel?"

"Yes."

Mr. Jones' lips thin.

"You may go back to class, James."

XXXXXX

Jim is fourteen and he is being rescued from Tarsus IV.

The Starfleeters keep poking him and prodding him and asking him questions, but he's still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that his family's dead. The world's changing too quickly, people are too noisy and numerous. He's not even sure if he believes that these people are from Starfleet. Obviously, if they were really from Starfleet they would have come sooner. What's the point of only arriving after everyone's dead?

Detachedly, he reflects on everything Sam had ever told him about Starfleet, and he decides that maybe he's wrong, and that's exactly when they should arrive. That's Starfleet's MO, modus operandi, way of operating. To be late and useless and only show up for the cleanup and the condolences and the funerals. And the flowers that're sent to the doorstep of a farmhouse in Iowa every birthday, but they're not for his birthday, are they?

He wonders whether he'll get flowers from Starfleet, now.

He's taken onto the starship and he doesn't protest because, if it's a choice between Tarsus IV and a starship, well, what's the difference? He's lost family on both. And they stick him on a biobed and ask him questions, questions, questions.

He doesn't answer. He closes his eyes.

The harpies, the vultures, the carrion birds of Starfleet ('cause, after all, that's what they are, right? They only show up for the cleanup) are scattered by a new voice.

Jim opens his eyes, and sees that the voice is swathed in command gold.

His closes his eyes with sudden disinterest.

Boots approach his bed, but the voice is silent. He allows his eyes to open halfway.

She looks worn. She looks like everything he feels (stretched, diminished, old and wrung out and exhausted and sad and horrorstruck). He opens his eyes fully.

Her lips quirk, but it's more because of a tick then out of any feeling of humor or joy.

"I can keep them away for a little while." She says. "Not until you want to talk about it, not until you're anywhere near ready, because you might never be. Hell, I know I never want to think about this again." He starts to close his eyes, but her words stop him. "That doesn't change the fact that we need to talk about it, though. We need to talk and think and remember, because part of my job is making sure this never happens again." She considered him silently for a moment. "I'm the captain, in case you didn't know. So I should be able to keep the vultures away from you for a little while." She gave him a nod, and left with those as her parting words.

Jim thought about the captain, the first one he had ever met.

A captain's job was hell, but maybe it wasn't all that terrible.

XXXXXX

Jim is nineteen, and finally leaving home.

He's been working part-time for the past three years and saving up, and now that he's graduated he's leaving Iowa for good.

He's got a shuttle ticket for San Francisco; it's the only place shuttles from ship construction bases in the middle-of-nowhere Iowa go to. He finds his seat, happy that he's next to a window. A man claims the seat next to him.

Jim doesn't bother looking at his neighbor until the shuttle's taken off; he'd much rather watch the ground fall away and the corn stalks blur into perfectly formed rectangles.

He glances at his companion out of the corner of his eye. Catching sight of the command-gold shirt poking out from the man's jacket, he does an unsubtle double-take.

The man (perhaps he's used to being stared at?) notices, and gives Jim a smile. It's small, but it's welcoming, too. He seems content to let Jim initiate the conversation, though. Jim isn't sure he wants to bother the man, but he is sure that he wants to talk to him. Before the silence can get too awkward, he holds out his hand, "Hi, I'm Jim." He knows enough not to tell a Starfleeter his last name.

"I'm Ben." The man says, shaking Jim's hand. At Jim's raised eyebrows, he laughs. "Fine, _Captain_ Ben, of the USS Pegasus."

"Captain? How do you like your job?" Jim said it easily, but perhaps a tenseness in his shoulders or a slight narrowing of his eyes gave him away. Ben gives him a considering look.

"You're not looking for the recruitment spiel, are you?"

Jim frowns slightly. "If you gave it to me, I'd probably find somewhere else to sit." Ben nods.

"Ok. It's stressful. You get days and weeks of nothing followed by a few hours of adrenalin-fueled emergencies. You get screwed-up first contacts, whether it's the Federation or someone else screwing it up, it doesn't matter. Aliens who never had anything but lightning and meteors from the night sky to worry about suddenly find that there's a whole universe out there, and they're helpless to defend against most of it. You get diseases, malfunctions, and good ol' fashioned miscommunications that threaten to wipe out whole colonies. You lose subordinates." Ben was silent for a moment. "When it happens, you feel like everything's falling apart and there's nothing you can do to stop it. Your whole ship performs its best, better than its best, and you still fail." The captain offered Jim a small smile. "But that's the bad stuff. Good stuff happens, too. You find a cure for the Andorian mumps in some weed on a backwater planet in the middle of nowhere and no one has to die anymore. You make a first-contact, and five years later they're clamoring to join the Federation instead of the Klingons. You negotiate a ceasefire between two warring cultures and they stop killing each other. You arrive in time." Ben's not looking at Jim anymore; he's looking out the window at the stars. "Those're the good things, and when those happen it feels like you can change the world."

Jim huffs an awed laugh. "Just couldn't resist a little recruitment spiel at the end?"

Ben returns the laugh. "Even if it was, it's all true. I'd have an easier life if the Pegasus wasn't in it, but I think it'd be less of a life, too."

"Hmm." Jim hums, smile not quite gone from his face.

XXXXXX

Jim's twenty-two. He's bleeding from multiple cuts in his face, and he's too boozed up to be getting lectured by a hard-ass Starfleeter captain.

"You can be an officer in four years. Have your own ship in eight." Pike is saying. "I believe you could do it."

Jim blows him off, but inside he's thinking _captain_. He could be a captain. It's hard, it's terrible, and it's dangerous. Oh, how it's dangerous. But, and here's the but, _does it really matter_? He doesn't have a wife. He doesn't have any kids. Hell, he barely has any family at all. No real friends to care if he drops off the face of the earth. And that's the thing.

That is the difference between George and Jim Kirk.

Jim Kirk has nothing to lose.

As Jim Kirk's life has been going, he's living a semi-nomadic. He's more likely to be killed in a bar fight, suffocate from a bee sting, or spin out on his motorcycle than he would be if he was in space. And if he was in space, he'd be making a difference. He'd be doing something.

With no one to lose, no one to lose _him_, what was stopping him?

Nothing.

At this moment, he has less than no life. But as captain of a starship?

Jim feels his fingers tingle with excitement.

XXXXXX

Jim Kirk is twenty-three and Admiral Pike just called him captain.

He's standing in his stiff dress uniform in front of the whole population of Starfleet Academy. The auditorium's painfully, achingly empty compared to when he was last here, and becoming a captain at the cost of so many other lives, lives just like his father's, is bittersweet.

He thinks of all the families that are now just like his; that're minus a mom or dad or sister or brother all because of Starfleet.

But now he's starting to see that that's not true.

It's not because of Starfleet, it's because they were _in_ Starfleet. It's because they put themselves on the front line. If Starfleet didn't exist, then Earth wouldn't exist right now, because who else was there to stop Nero? Who else would explore the universe, connect the distant stars and strengthen the bonds between aliens? Who else was there to deliver the vaccine, stop the genocide, or chase away the crazy Romulans?

These are the people who want to make a difference. Three hundred years ago they would have joined the army or volunteered for the peace corp.

He thinks of the families that're just like his, and he hopes they don't blame Starfleet.

He certainly doesn't.

XXXXXX

Captain James T. Kirk is thirty-one years old. He finishes turning around, and opens his mouth to respond to whoever was calling him.

But then he sees the cadet hurry up to a grey-haired man in command-gold who had been walking a few yards behind him. "Captain, I'm glad I caught you. You see…."

Smiling in wonder at how comfortable the title has become, Kirk turns and continues down the hallway.


End file.
